Life is a Heavy Burden Sometimes: My Year as a 1L
by Isabel0329
Summary: Summary: When Edward Masen resigns himself to his legacy to follow in his lawyer father’s footsteps, he finds something much more than he anticipated. He finds hope and new beginnings.
1. Prologue

Summary: When Edward Masen resigns himself to his legacy to follow in his lawyer father's footsteps, he finds something much more than he anticipated. He finds hope and new beginnings.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

**Life is a Heavy Burden Sometimes: My Year as a 1L **

**Prologue**

The world seemed oddly quiet and still as I sat on the back deck of the house. My parents were inside, probably long asleep. They had demanding jobs. My father, the well established and well known lawyer. My mother, the society wife who played her part perfectly.

I was the wayward son who was coming home to fulfill his destiny.

College had been fun while it lasted and the duel history and psychology degree I received all too easy to bluff my way through. Why read the textbook when you could just read the Wikipedia entry for a particular historical period or event?

I'd done my fair share of partying but was no playboy. I'd been drunk more times than I could count, but never black out drunk or drunk enough to do anything stupid. Mostly it was just a bunch of my friends and me at someone's apartment chilling out listening to Hendrix and playing Playstation or something. I was never one for big parties. Crowds made me nervous.

There had been girls in my life. Blonds and brunettes. Even a redhead or two. They all had been special to me at the time, though none of them special enough to consider anything long term. As college progressed I saw friends all around me fall one by one to the lure of engagements and marriage. I wasn't strictly against commitment; I just hadn't found the one I wanted to commit too.

Fate was something I battled against constantly. Knowing what is to come is the harshest mistress one can have. While I was off at college I could pretend that I was on my own and doing what I wanted to do, but once college was over the full force of my future was thrust upon me and it was something I couldn't avoid any longer. A dual degree meant prolonging college and putting off the inevitable.

Problem was that inevitable is just that – inevitable. There is no stopping what is to come from happening.

I'd hoped and prayed that something would change, anything would change. But no, nothing had changed.

With the ink on the degrees still drying, my father had shaken my hand and given me that knowing look.

"It's about time you came home to continue the legacy on," he had said.

The legacy was something I'd carried with me my entire life. His father was a lawyer. His father's father was a lawyer. His father's father's father was a lawyer.

I'm sure somewhere in England there was dusty records on some forgotten shelf with our family name written in illegible script proclaiming court cases and verdicts in our name.

It was a fate I constantly fought against.

If you looked me in the eye and asked me, I could genuinely say I didn't want to be a lawyer.

Problem was I couldn't tell you what I wanted to be instead.

I was like a ship without a captain. Just drifting out at sea. I studied history because I liked reading history books as a child. Psychology because the mind fascinated me. Sure, political science would have been a smarter choice for a future lawyer. Or perhaps writing. Maybe even communications.

But those were degrees that made more sense. A secret part of me wanted to get an aeronautical degree just to really piss off the old man.

Being the dutiful son though, I at least studied something that was remotely useful. Or so I was told time and time again.

Studying for the LSATs, the law school admission test, was something I did last minute. While some people spent months and even years preparing with classes and tutors, I bought one of those review books and didn't crack it open until a week before them exam. I skipped over the sections where the book editors taught you how to answer the questions and instead went straight for the practice questions. I took four of those stupid practice tests. My rough scores were all over the place and quite frankly I liked that.

Maybe once I wouldn't be so damn dependable.

I had a few drinks the night before the test and went in with slightly bloodshot eyes. The girl taking the test to the left of me was likely obsessive compulsive, having pencils that were all the same length and lining them up in the same direction between each testing section. The boy on the right spent the entire exam looking like he was about to vomit from nerves. They looked at me like I had three heads for finishing early and sleeping.

Yeah well, you would sleep too if the girl in the next apartment had a new boyfriend and a set of lungs on her that could rattle the pyramids. Let's just say I knew more about her sex life than I cared to know.

My recommendations were stellar thanks to my father, all of them saying how driven I was and how I was an upstanding member of the community. A few of them were from people I'd never even heard of, so I'm not sure how they could know these things about me.

I almost cried the day I got the acceptance letter in the mail, knowing what it meant for my life. The only other time I'd cried in my entire life was when I was five and found out Santa wasn't real.

Illusions are all we have sometimes.

Lightening bugs flashed out in the backyard, reminding me that summer was ending and fall quickly beginning. I longed to have the kind of freedom they had.

My freedom was coming to a grinding halt.

My name is Edward Masen and tomorrow I start my first year of law school.


	2. Chapter 1: Welcome to Hell

**Life is a Heavy Burden Sometimes: My Year as a 1L **

**Chapter 1: Welcome to Hell **

I swear, sometimes Murphy and I are best friends. Murphy, meet Edward.

Why is Murphy my best friend on a momentous day like this? Please do note the sarcasm I say 'momentous' with.

I got lost on my way to my first day of law school. Genuinely lost. Like in the wrong county lost. Driving in circles trying to find the right street to get back on so I could assume the mantle of my last name and become the lawyer my father always knew I would be.

And all that crap he spewed at dinner when he made it home before 10pm on weekdays. The upside to having a lawyer for a father is that you never see him if you dislike him.

The downside, of course, is the pressure you are subsequently under.

Thanks, Dad. I appreciate it.

I don't know why I missed the damn turn this morning. The drive was a relatively easy one, with only a few turns and 30 short miles between me and what would be my second if not first home for the next three years. I knew my way out there, having gone a few times to drop off the deposit check and buy books.

Legal textbooks should be classified as deadly weapons in some states. Three inches thick and nearly five pounds each. Not a single page with text bigger than eleven point. Worst of all – no pictures to distract you from the voluminous information contained within its pages.

Not even a single diagram.

They'd all been opened and used already, thanks to professors who saw fit to assign 50 pages of reading before classes even started. Only about 50 of the total 200 plus assigned pages had actually gotten read and that was just fine with me. I doubted many of my professors would go full throttle through the material at the beginning anyway. They'd ease us into law school and be nice about it.

Or at least that's what I was hoping for. Realism never was one of my strong points.

When I finally got to the so-called prestigious law school, I was pushing my time and hurriedly found a parking place among all the other student cars. I was pleasantly surprised to see they weren't all BMWs and Mercedes like I had been expecting. There was a Toyota and Honda here and there and even an old red and rusty truck that stuck out like a sore thumb in the lot full of otherwise shiny cars.

I grabbed my bag out of the backseat and threw it over my shoulder, running into the building at breakneck speed. Grabbing the crumpled piece of paper that was my class schedule out of a side pocket in my bag, I found the room I needed to be in and navigated among the maze of rooms to find it.

My watch said I had another five minutes left before class started and I thanked my lucky stars my legs carried me faster than most people's. There was a buzz of people inside the room and I took a deep breath to settle my wildly thumping heart before pushing the door open.

To my great dismay the entire room was filled except for the first row.

Of course.

Nobody ever wanted to be in the first row for anything. Sitting in the first row meant you were prime pickings for any overly enthusiastic or sadistic professor, regardless of what grade or level of school you were in. I preferred the middle of the room. It made you look like you were interested but still afforded you enough anonymity that you could get away not being there a day or two if you suddenly found yourself too hung over from the previous night's partying to stuff yourself into day old stinky pants and haul your sorry ass to class.

I craned my neck to see if I possibly missed an empty seat here or there, but a thorough examination left me with the same conclusion. Front row.

Sighing deeply, I contemplated my options. Or, well, option.

The first row could make me look like I was super interested in whatever we'd be talking about. I could be seen as the go-getter, the perfect student even if I wasn't always right. Chances were good that I wouldn't be right as often as I liked to be. Chances were very good about that.

Thankfully I wouldn't be alone in the front row. There was one seat taken by a girl with long brown hair that covered her face as she kept her head down. Her book was open in front of her, the colors of her highlighting plainly visible even from here. She was taking frantic notes in a laptop, her fingers flying across the keyboard and she looked deep in concentration without even needing to see her face.

Great, I thought. One of those kind of students. The ones who put their hands up for every question, preferring to go with the quantity over quality method. The kind who took detailed notes of everything the professor said. Notecards with study terms. Binders kept in immaculate condition.

God, I hated those kind of students.

They always made me work harder than I liked. "Oh that's a fantastic idea, Sally. Why doesn't everybody write a ten page paper for Monday about the Western Plains Indians so we can discuss Sally's excellent question then."

Fucking Sally.

Okay, I exaggerate – a little. But it seems like every class has a student like that and those kind of students were nothing but trouble to the rest of us.

I slid in the seat two in from the end of the row and Brown Hair barely even registered my presence. She kept right on at what she was doing so intently.

A once over of her clothing revealed what a less observant person would miss looking at her. She was wearing dress pants and some nice looking sweater thing, but by no means were they first quality. To counter the inevitable question of "how the heck does this Edward guy know about women's clothing?" I answer with this: it's not women's clothing I know about but rather dress and work attire.

Having spent summers working for my father in his law firm doing errands and being the office coffee boy, I knew my fair share about suits and proper legal office attire. Thankfully I never had to wear a monkey suit myself on my Starbucks and dry cleaning runs. The standard uniform for male lawyers was a suit and tie. Nothing less. There could be a little variation in the suit, whether blue, black, pinstriped or solid, but it was usually fairly conservative and pretty boring. No brightly colored ties and certainly no wild shirts underneath.

Women's attire was given more leeway but generally the suit was still the norm. Women just had the option of suit pants or a skirt.

And having seen plenty of female partners, associates and interns, I knew what looked good on a woman and what didn't. Hell, I'd even had a little closet time with one of the freshly hired associates in the supply closet in the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college. The girl had fantastic legs and kept tempting me all summer by wearing skirts and heels.

Anywho, back to Brown Hair.

The suit pants looked like they'd had some wear to them and I noticed a fray on the bottom hem of her sweater.

I filed away these bits of data in the back of my head for further analysis.

Taking a cautious look around the room, I saw the normal clustering of students. Everybody had very serious looks on their faces and quite frankly it made me nervous. I wasn't exactly what you would call a serious student and never really had been.

School had always come easy for Edward Masen.

Not to brag or anything.

The clocked ticked down to 9am when class was scheduled to begin. Precisely on as if he'd timed it, the back door to the classroom opened and swung shut behind a decrepit looking old man who was easily older than my long since dead grandfather. His hair was white as snow and rumpled like he'd just woken up. Glasses were perched on his nose a little off kilter. He was wearing an old man sweater – you know, the kind that buttons up in the center and has pockets for a guy's cigarettes, flask or whatever. The sweater even had suede patches at the elbow. How professorial of him.

He moved at a snail's pace but yet seemed like he'd done this a million times. And by the looks of him, he had. I wondered if he'd even remember us when we were done with his class.

A hush instantly fell on the murmuring students as he neared the front of the room with the huge whiteboards ready to be written on.

"Welcome to law school. From this moment forward you are no longer one of the untrained plebeians of society. You are a member of the learned class and should act like it. I am not here to coddle you, baby you or treat you like children. I am here to train you to become lawyers and I will treat you as such. I expect the same in return," his grand voice boomed and filled the room from all to wall, a surprising strength emanating from him for looking like he did.

He turned and stood in front of the podium and gripped both sides of it like he was holding on to it for support. Knowing eyes apprised each and every one of us for a second, his brow creasing further with each face.

"The law is a harsh mistress. She will demand a lot out of you, perhaps more than some of you are willing to give. I will demand even more out of you than she does. The application committee has deemed you worthy of admittance to this fine institution, but I personally think they let in too many unfit for sitting where you are. Statistics tell me that 30% of you will not finish what you have set out to do here. It is my goal to make that number even larger."

I heard a soft whimper from the back of the room somewhere and gut instinct told me that person would be the first to go.

In all the time I'd spent contemplating law school as to what it meant for my life, I'd actually never contemplated if it would be difficult. School being hard for me was something I wasn't used to and for the first time in my life, in that moment, I actually had doubts about my own ability to do something.

It was an unsettling feeling to say the least.

"My name is Professor Simmons and this is Contract Law. Let's begin."

Papers swished and pens clicked, at the ready to be used. All around me and behind me, fingers sat at the ready to take down every word this man said as if he was God himself.

"In law school we teach by what is called the Socratic Method. This means I ask you the questions," Professor Simmons said gruffly and glanced down at the podium. A class roster no doubt.

I could hear the inward rush of air from practically everybody in the classroom hoping that their name would not be the one he called on. Nobody wanted to be the first one to speak in law school. Too bad it had to be someone.

"Mr. Hastings, tell me the facts of this case."

Everybody except poor Mr. Hastings exhaled in relief.

A rather beefy looking guy with a baseball hat on backwards began to speak cautiously and softly.

"There was this doctor and he had a patient …" he stumbled over his words, his head buried in his notebook where he'd written down notes on what we'd been assigned ahead of time.

"Speak up, Mr. Hastings. I was practicing law when your parents were in diapers still."

A girl in the middle of the room let out a nervous giggle.

"There's a doctor and he has a patient …" Hastings answered louder this time.

I watched as Simmons grilled the guy about every minute fact of the case, alternatively letting the guy ramble on about something completely wrong until he'd just shake his head and ask the blonde girl next to him to correct what Hastings had just wrongly stated.

For 50 minutes every student in that room held their breath every time Simmons would consult his roster, though he frequently returned to poor Hastings. At some point the kid even broke out into a sweat that was clearly visible on his forehead despite the hat.

We all took frantic notes, not knowing yet what to filter out as superfluous and what to consider gospel. I had a feeling that a lot of what Simmons said was pure puffery, but still wrote it down regardless. If there was one thing I knew about old lawyers it was that they liked to be quoted. Something told me that it was an easy way to garner favor and hopefully avoid having my intestines pulled out and slowly sliced open like Simmons's first victim had suffered.

Nobody wanted to be the one who made a fool of himself on the first day of class. Hell, nobody wanted to be the one to make a fool of himself on any day.

I was no exception despite my easy going attitude going into this whole thing.

The minute hand on the clock moved achingly slow, each minute feeling like an hour. Four times I looked up thinking that maybe ten or fifteen minutes at least had passed to find just four or five had gone by.

Law school, even on its first day, was already moving at a snail's pace for me.

It was as if the universe somehow conspired with the clocks to make it so everything moved a bit slower and made me suffer a bit more.

I briefly wondered who I had offended or what I had done to deserve this punishment.

The worst part it was just the first day. Even worse, the first class of three on the first day. Nothing like drawing out my torture for another three hours.

Finally class ended and Simmons stalked out of the room like he was disgusted with our performance that day, though personally I felt that my classmates had actually done quite well under the intense pressure of not completely fucking up on first impression.

Brown Hair next to me let out a breath so big that the thought occurred to me that she had been holding it the entire class period.

"Finally," she muttered so low that I barely heard her.

"It'll get better," I said offhand, thinking that she was talking to me.

She started and quickly threw me a plaintive look, like she really had been tortured. Her eyes flashed as deep brown as her hair and suddenly they were gone again, hidden behind the curtain of her hair.

"Don't bet on it," she murmured even lower and quickly shoved everything in the little messenger bag next to her chair. She was out of the classroom quicker than I could say 'exit.' The word "skittish" ran through my head and instantly I labeled her as such. Easily startled and just as easily scared.

I wondered why she was so scared.

It was just law school.

Nervous laughter bubbled around me, students slamming heavy textbooks, laptop lids clicking shut, and the ever present buzz of energy seeped from everybody's pores like sweat.

Why was everybody so damn nervous?

I would admit to having some nerves, but nothing like it seemed everybody else had. I was more nervous about making an ass of myself in front of everybody than I was about making an ass to Simmons. A professor was just a professor in spite of everything. They may think they know everything, but history told me that most of them knew their corner of the world and nothing else.

I looked down at the notebook I'd been taking frantic notes in. My usually neat writing was scrawled haphazardly across the page, belaying my own nerves.

Maybe there was something to everybody's mode of thinking.

Maybe I was underestimating all of this.

And just maybe Brown Hair had the right idea after all.


	3. Chapter 2: Changing Seasons

Author's note: For your information, the second part of the title is reference to the year in school Edward is. First year students are "1Ls" or first years. There are three years generally in law school and each year is labeled accordingly.

**Life is a Heavy Burden Sometimes: My Year as a 1L **

**Chapter 2: Changing Seasons**

The last remnants of summer were fading away with each morning I walked into class. Sunrise came incrementally later and slowly but surely the scorching heat of August faded into the cooler temperatures of late September. Fall was just around the corner. And after fall came winter.

Time spent in law school has a funny way of moving at an accelerated pace while still feeling like it's going much too slow. Certain classes seemed to last hours while others flew by. Simmon's contract law class was invariably one of those that seemed to last centuries.

I'd found that he had a way of not just asking questions, but rather interrogating. I laughed to myself that he could make the Pope question his own Catholicism if he stared at him long enough. With one eyebrow raised just slightly and his first finger pointing at you, it felt like your blood froze cold in your veins.

Of course, I didn't avoid his nasty glare forever, but thankfully my turn wasn't as painful as it looked for some people. Sure I felt like I answered all his questions wrong as he was staring me in the face and felt more like a suspect than a student, but a couple other students came up to me after class and said I looked cool and composed.

I didn't mention the entire back of my dark t-shirt was practically glued to my back with the cold sweat I'd broken out into.

Sometimes it was best not to let them see you sweat, literally and metaphorically.

I had a few people I talked to occasionally, but nobody I'd really call a friend. Time between classes was spent with my nose in a book trying to catch up or get ahead, so I didn't have to spend all night reading. Sleep was much more important to me than it seemed to be for my classmates.

Their mindless chatter reminded me too much of high school. Gossiping away at who slept with whom and who got drunk at what bar last night. Honestly, it didn't really interest me. Maybe there was a time I'd be front and center, throwing my own two cents into the boiling pot of rumor and innuendo, but it all seemed too petty for me now.

I could feel a change happening in me like the seasons were changing outside our little confines.

I lost track of what was going on in the world, only hearing of news by word of mouth or when someone mentioned something on Facebook. I rarely used the thing before, but suddenly found myself enraptured with the damn website. Probably as a procrastination tool more than anything, I reasoned, but I found it was the best way to keep in touch with friend who'd graduated with jobs and friends who were still in college.

I wanted to shout from the mountain tops to enjoy college while they were still in it or treasure having a job and contributing to society for once. Longing to be like them, I sucked up my pride and falsely answered that law school was fantastic whenever anybody asked.

My father did frequently, or at least as frequently as I saw him. His firm had just taken on a huge class action suit and he was chomping at the bit for things to move along. Take depositions. Find experts. Sign non-disclosure agreements. Whatever he did. I may have been heading his way in a few short years, but I was still in the dark about a majority of what he did on a day to day basis. He rarely talked about work.

All he did was gossip just like my mother. Her gossip was about whose wife was having an affair. My father's was about who was getting sued and whose child was in jail.

I was getting the impression that lawyers were a bunch of high school girls, their noses in other people's businesses all the time. As Grandmother Masen would have said - they had nose troubles.

Thankfully I didn't see either of them much, thanks to the ever present and ever helpful excuse of reading I had to do.

I think what people don't realize about law school is that the material is not difficult; there just is a massive amount of it. Twenty pages of reading for a class may not sound that challenging, but the problem is that each sentence was like a legal landmine. One little word could make the difference in a whole paragraph's meaning and I found myself having to revise how I read. Where before I would graze over the words like a cow in the fields, picking and choosing what felt best for me, now I had to be very precise and detailed. Twenty pages felt more like forty.

Everybody around me developed a different system for how they did their work. Brown Hair took meticulous notes. She documented everything. Her fingers flew across the keyboard of her laptop and it felt more like she was a stenographer or a court reporter than a student. She rarely took her eyes off any given professor and personally it would have unnerved me to have a student so trained on every minute detail I was lecturing or questioning on.

She rarely said anything, almost never speaking unless spoken to. When professors would call on her ("Ms. Swan …") she blanched the color of death. Not just pale, but ashen. Bone white. She would mutter an answer and invariably the professor would have to ask her to speak up and repeat what she'd just said. Every time she spoke her cheeks would get redder and redder and I could feel the heat of them from where I sat.

Sometimes I wondered why she was there, why she was at law school. She always looked so nervous, so out of place. Of course, the rest of us didn't look much better I suspect.

There were some notable exceptions. There was this one guy who was cool under pressure no matter what. I think his name was Jasper something or other. Hell, I didn't pay much attention to names, just what the individual person said.

He wore motorcycle boots and some of the tightest pants I'd ever seen a man wearing. Long black t-shirts he pushed up to his elbows to reveal tattoos of eagles on his forearms. Someone made an offhand comment to me that he had a degree in fashion merchandising and it surprised the hell out of me. He looked more like he belonged on the back of Harley than he did sitting in front of a runway.

Everybody had their past, and everybody had their reasons for being here it seemed.

One thing I liked about Jasper was he rarely, if ever took notes. Unlike "Ms. Swan" who probably recorded the professor's facial expressions along with his or her words on her laptop with impressive speed and efficiency, Jasper wrote on a yellow legal pad of paper. A sentence here, a sentence there. He had a mind like a bear trap. Able to spit out the tiniest detail upon command.

I suspected he could be gay until I caught him unabashedly grinding his hips into the girl who sat next to him in all our classes in the corner of a hallway when they thought nobody was around.

She was a tiny thing, sprightly even, but a major spitfire. Someone jokingly called her a "pixie" and she gave the guy a look that probably shriveled his balls up to his sternum. On top of that, she was just as smart as Jasper was. Took more notes than he did, but could weave the analysis of a case like no other. She was almost late to every class, sliding in seconds before the professor and amazingly always composed whenever asked a question that would have left any other person quaking in his boots. I'd never even spoken to her and she already had my respect. I knew her as "Ms. Brandon." My own nickname for her was Spitfire.

I don't know why I didn't make friends with these people. They seemed cool enough, seemed like they were well adjusted and sane. Something was holding me back it felt like.

A part of me, an immensely large part of me, felt trapped there in school. Felt like I was just going through the motions. That any minute I would wake up from the dream and find myself still in college and still playing pool with my friends down at the bar instead of studying. Every night I went to bed, exhausted by the day though I'd done very little physical labor, only to sleep fitfully through the night.

Bad dreams and horrible nightmares became the new norm for me. I'd always slept dead out to the world, even once sleeping through an earthquake on a rare family vacation to Disneyland when I was 13 and my father scheduled a mere four days of vacation into his extraordinarily busy work schedule. He'd complained the entire trip that he had mountains of work to do back at the office, my mother shushing him and insisting he have fun even if he had to pretend.

The leaves on the trees were fading to a deep fiery orange when we were handed our first major legal writing assignment in writing class. I had always considered myself to be somewhat of a good writer and didn't feel like it would be too much of a problem. We had the opportunity to confer with the writing professor as we worked on the assignment and it seemed like every time I walked past her office that Brown Hair Swan was sitting outside waiting for her to be available.

She really was a nervous girl it seemed. Perpetually worried about how she was doing and if she was on the right path.

And yet she looked and seemingly felt so out of place.

Maybe it was because I felt like so much of an outsider myself that I noticed it more than the others. I kept myself purposefully detached, on the fringes. I felt like an outsider looking in at a great social experiment.

As the deadline for our writing assignment loomed closer and closer, I kept putting it off. I would do it the weekend before the Monday it was due, I'd decided. Otherwise my brain just didn't seem to concentrate whenever I attempted to do any work on it. Years of working close to deadlines and due dates had my brain trained to work that way and that way only.

Each hour that passed only seemed to make Brown Hair Swan more nervous. Her carefully groomed exterior was fraying at the ends and I was seeing her come more and more undone.

What concerned me was this wasn't even a big assignment. And definitely wasn't finals. What would happen to her then? Would she snap and be one of those 30 percent that dropped out?

Something about her made me feel very protective of her, like she was this innocent little bird like her namesake I needed to shelter from a raging storm.

We were sitting waiting for Simmon's class to start about four days before the assignment was due (no, I still hadn't started despite my best efforts to the contrary) and I was just watching her. She pounded away at her keyboard harder than normal, and this was a girl who practically punched the keys anyway. She wasn't wearing her standard dress pants and work type top she normally wore to school and that felt very out of the ordinary for her.

"Hey, Swan," I finally said when I could take no more of her pounding.

She was lost in thought though, too intensely concentrating on what she was doing to notice or hear me.

"Swan," I said a little louder.

No answer and not even an eye twitch my way.

"Okay that's it," I muttered.

I leaned in close to her and her perfume hit me like a ton of bricks. No, it wasn't perfume. It smelled too fresh and clean to be perfume. Girl's perfumes always smelled heavy to me, like the way a flower would smell if you sprayed it with air freshener.

Inhaling again, I pulled the smell of her all the way down to my toes. My eyes slide shut without me wanting them too and I probably had this sappy puppy dog look on my face.

"Excuse me?" her confused voice cut through my enjoyment like a hot knife through butter.

My eyes flew open and she was giving me what at best was a confused and at worst a disgusted look.

"Are you sniffing me?" she said and her eyebrows pulled together in the universal female sign of annoyance.

I straightened my body back up, pulling away from her though the smell still lingered inside my nostrils.

"Uh, no. I just wanted to get your attention." I was trying to cover my as and as best I could tell she was seeing right through me.

"Well, you have my attention now. And you wanted?" Brown Hair was clearly annoyed by now. I'd invaded her space, sniffed her like a bloodhound and broken her concentration. I could understand the second annoyance, but the other two were not warranted I felt.

"Just wanted to tell you that you need to let up on those keys before one goes flying up and hits me in the eye," I haphazardly smiled while giving the lamest version of a 'chill out' speech ever.

Her eyes narrowed on me and for a second I could see behind her eyes that she wasn't the scared, nervous birdie I thought she was. She had some real energy in her that I hadn't seen yet.

"I like to type with conviction," she said curtly.

I couldn't stop the snort that left my nose.

"There's conviction and then there's a life sentence," I chuckled.

Apparently my lame attempt at a joke wasn't flying with her either.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Brown Hair asked and crossed her arms over her chest.

I sighed and decided maybe the best route to take was the most direct one.

"Look, I just wanted to say that you seem really wound up tight. Maybe you should chill out a bit and not take this so seriously," I finally said trying to make it sound as good intentioned as possible.

Brown Hair Swan was silent for a moment and suddenly the fire in her eyes intensified into an all out inferno. She leaned in close to me and my pulse skyrocketed.

Her eyes, the entrance to her soul, spoke volumes. She didn't like what I'd just said for one second.

"Maybe you should take this more seriously. Not all of us can skate by on our good looks and Daddy's reputation," she said sharply and very pointedly.

I recoiled like she'd slapped me. Every nerve ending in my body was on fire and super sensitive.

I stared at her, slack jawed and in shock, as she resumed her frantic, intense typing like she'd never stopped. Like I was someone to be crushed or someone to be ignored.

It wasn't a feeling I much liked honestly.

I know I should have said something back, defended myself somehow. Hell, I should have told her she was wrong.

Problem was, I didn't have anything to counter her with.

And I knew it.

The question was though – how did she know it?


End file.
